Zohu Corporation, which develops cloud-based ERP solutions for small and medium enterprises, plans to set up a large development centre in Tirupati, it was announced on Tuesday.
Andhra Pradesh's Information Technology Nara Lokesh said the firm, known for operating from tier-II cities, was setting up a small unit with 150 employees in a leased premises.
It has sought land to launch the development centre. He hoped that investment and other details would be clear by next month.
The Minister said some IT companies prefer temple town for their operations due to its proximity to Chennai and Bengaluru.
Tirupati is also emerging as electronic manufacturing cluster for cell phones and consumer durables.
Dixon has already started operations for manufacturing LCD TVs. It has so far invested Rs 100 crore in two production lines and is ramping up the operations.
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Home-grown mobile phone brand Celkon has already started manufacturing the phones while Carbon is expected to start manufacturing by November-end. Lava will start foundation work in December, he said.
India's first lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant will be launched by the month-end.
He hopes with end-to-end ecosystem, the Electronic Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) there will emerge like a mini-Shenzen and will reduce the cost associated with the entire process.
The companies have so far invested Rs 1,000 crore and it includes investment by Foxcon, which has set up operations in Sri City.
Lokesh said 26 companies had applied for setting up their plants in the second EMC in Tirupati. "We are in last leg of evaluation. They are all SMEs, who will create 200 to 500 jobs each," he added.
The EMC in Anantapur will be defence and automotive related.
Stating that 40,000 jobs were created in electronics during last three years, he was confident that the target of 200,000 jobs will be achieved by 2019.
He said 22,000 jobs were created in IT and claimed that they are on course to achieve the target of 100,000 jobs by 2019.
Tirupati and state capital Amaravati in addition to Visakhapatnam were attracting IT companies.
A total of 27 IT companies signed agreements with the state government for setting up their operations in Amaravti, where 200 acres of land has been designated for IT. Of them, nine companies had become operational with their own infrastructure including Pi Datacenter.
Lokesh said the companies had already invested about Rs 650 crore and will make further investment of Rs 350 crore. The companies coming up in the zone will create 10,000 to 11,000 jobs and it excludes HCL's IT and training centres.
HCL, which is setting up the centres with an investment of Rs 600 crore, will provide 7,000 jobs in the first phase and ramp up it to 11,000.
--IANS
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